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Ulan Yihuang has been notified that Hu Yihuang will come to meet him, and receive his soldiers and horses to form a mixed northwest corps.

Then cross the Hetao area, cross the Taihang Mountains, enter the North China Plain, and participate in the decisive battle of the two rivers.

He knew that Hu Yihuang, the guy who had done a lot of things in his name, was leading the veritable Hu family's army to come, and the two armies would soon meet.

Some of his own brothers will remain to assist him in other tasks of the Heavenly Army.

The area in front of it is at the upper end of the Yellow River, south of the Yin Mountain, on the north bank of the Yellow River, which is the Hetao Plain.

Since Ulan Yihuang inherited the property of the Ulan family and became the head of the family, he inevitably inherited the love and hatred of the Ulan family.

A large part of these entanglements have to do with the land.

Because this area has always been the habitat of nomads, that is, in a certain sense, it belongs to the Ulan family.

However, because of Sino-Chinese relations, there is no such thing as a fixed legal form of all relations.

After Daoguang, the area of Tangjin was allowed to be opened, that is, the land west of the Hetao, and the "wild goose pedestrians" entered the Hetao in a mighty way, reclaimed and settled, and formed sparse and sparse villages on this vast and sparsely populated land.

The reason why they are called Yanxing people is because these people went to this area to rent land in the early Qing Dynasty, went to their land every spring, cultivated the land there with a relatively small land rent, and returned to their original places after the autumn harvest, mostly poor Han farmers in the central and northern parts of Shanxi.

They were actually cultivating the land owned by the Ulan family.

When these outsiders were weak, they would pay a small amount of rent.

The ground rent, though small, at least shows that they admit it. These lands belong to the Ulan family, and they can also be economically compensated for the loss of these lands that cannot be grazing.

In addition to this, the Ulan family also has vast pastures and even more vast deserts.

But there is no benefit, there is such a lawn with abundant water and grass.

This is also a clear thing, just as being able to cultivate and produce grain and vegetables must be a good place to grow pasture.

These farmers came to rent their crops for the largest migration in China's modern history. It's called "Walking to the West Exit".

It was also a land enclosure movement, in which people rented land at low prices, and this led to the emergence of a special class in Chinese history - the land merchants.

The local merchants used cheap labor to divert water from the Yellow River to their leased land, forming the original Yellow River irrigation.

In the absence of any scientific instruments, several large trunk canals were developed in the Hetao area.

One of the oldest canals, called the Old Soap Fire Canal, was built in the 42nd year of Kangxi and was excavated by the local merchants at that time.

Yongji Canal, also known as Tangjin Canal, was built in the fifth year of Daoguang. It was the local businessmen Zhen Yu and Wei Yang who organized the excavation.

The Gangji Canal, or the Gangmu River Canal, was successfully built and was excavated by local businessmen He Qing and others.

The Hetao area in the western part of the Hetao Plain is commonly known as the Great Houtao.

As the saying goes: "The Yellow River is harmful, but only one set of riches", "The Yellow River in the world is rich in the Hetao, and the rich in the front and rich in the back", which mainly refers to these places.

The soil in the Hetao area is fertile. The irrigation system is well developed and suitable for growing crops such as wheat, rice, cereal, soybean, sorghum, corn, sugar beet, etc. It has become the most important agricultural area in the northwest.

But then the problem came that these landowners, after mastering these land use rights, continued to expand their power.

Downwards, they increased the burden on the peasants, and upwards, they reduced the rents paid to the princes and nobles. Gather wealth in your own hands.

However, while concentrating wealth, they also concentrated contradictions, and the struggle with the Ulan family escalated to the point of fighting each other.

Once the force is decided. Then the competition for recruiting troops and horses began, and the battle became bigger and bigger, with more and more dead people, and more hatred, which also led to round after round of arms race.

This is also part of the reason why Ulan Yihuang has a large cavalry on hand.

There is also constant competition and change between local businessmen, and there are points and combinations between them, and the largest one is the Zhen family.

Zhen Jin, the contemporary head of the family, is like a soil emperor.

However, he, the emperor of the soil, was more economically savvy and had the means to operate than those princes, nobles, and Manchu officials.

On the basis of large-scale land reclamation and agricultural production in the Hetao area, he also created a unique management system. In this process, because the Manchus did not have basic control over such economic activities, Zhen Jin and other Hetao merchants invented a mode of operation called "gongzhong" and "ox calf".

As a non-governmental group, these modes of operation are based on the control of water rights, and then basically control production, commerce, civil armed forces, religious activities, educational resources, etc., in their own hands, somewhat similar to the large companies with monopoly power in later generations.

In this way, they exercised the role that the Manchu Qing government should play in a certain way, so that their influence continued to increase.

In fact, this is a phenomenon unique to this region, in which local merchants, including Zhen Jin, combine commercial usury capital with land and seek high profits by repairing canals to irrigate land, collecting grain rents, and selling grain.

The conditions that allow a local merchant like Zhen Jin to succeed are, first and foremost, the natural conditions.

The Hetao Plain is located in the south of the Yinshan Mountains, on the banks of the Yellow River, and the Yinshan Mountains can block and weaken the cold current from the northwest.

However, the stratum of the back set is purely formed by the siltation of the Yellow River, which is flat and fertile, slightly alkaline, and the irrigation of water is sparse like chicken manure, and the planting is abundant, and the stone field is strong if there is no water.

The climate here is sparse with little rainfall, and the rainfall is only about 150 mm.

This led to the irrigation of the farmland by canal water, and the water could not reach it, although the soil was abandoned into ruins.

Under such circumstances, the channels that should be irrigated with the water of the Yellow River have become the top priority of the economic development of the Hetao.

However, the development of channels is not easy.

It often works out of the same vein. It may take decades, or more than 100,000 yuan. Fathers and sons from generation to generation, relatives and friends work together, in order to achieve things, and after the completion of the project, it must also be constantly maintained, and the canal has been completed. and shall brush his body deeply every year, and thicken his back, and the amount of money for his maintenance shall be enormous.

This determines that the excavation of the channel is not the work of a single household, but requires extensive social mobilization, so as to gather forces and build water conservancy projects.

But the premise of this action is that there is a strong leadership force to carry out social mobilization and organize human and material resources to carry out these huge projects.

Often, the most suitable leaders were the Manchu rank-and-file institutions. But in the Hetao area during the Manchu Qing Dynasty, there were obviously no such historical conditions.

The Qing Dynasty had a relatively loose administration of the region.

At the beginning of the founding of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, those attached princes and nobles gave Urad three flags in the front, middle and back, and the left and right wing flags of Ordos with their land. At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, there was no administrative body for Han immigrants, only the local flag system.

As a result, the region was under the royal administration of different princes and nobles. And the location of all the royal palaces is not in the territory of the Hetao, therefore. The various affairs within the Loop are often overlooked by them.

Even if it receives attention, it is not within the reach of the whip, and the efficiency of the guide to solve the problem is greatly reduced.

Moreover, under this management mechanism, the most important people do not have the status of being governed.

If there is an internal dispute among the immigrants who have been reclaimed privately, they can only go to the border departments and counties to seek justice. Obey the people's convenience, and don't care about subordination.

In this way, it is necessary for Zhen Jin and others to exercise management, and it really gives them an opportunity to take advantage of.

Businessmen are particularly sensitive to profit opportunities at all times.

On the principle of no profit can not be early. Zhen Jin and other local merchants built the main irrigation canal to divert the Yellow River, thus also controlling the irrigated land and the peasants who cultivated the land in their own hands.

When the local merchants controlled the channels and the right to water, they also obtained the right to dominate the agriculture of the Hetao.

At present, the land area of Zhen Jin Takong zhì extends to the shore of Wuliangsu Sea in the east, to the west of Wuyuan, to the foot of Wolf Mountain in the north, and along the Yellow River in the south, with a total length of about 260 li, a width of about 140 li, and a radius of hundreds of li.

Then, they use both soft and hard hands to manage the land and farmers to which they belong.

First of all, they established some management institutions, which are gongzhong and calves, similar to the branches and subsidiaries under the later large companies, and the setting of these two management levels is mainly to manage production activities.

The main management body of the "calf" is made up of three parts.

Among them, the "treasurer" is responsible for "managing all affairs"; The foreman is responsible for "managing the fields and releasing the land"; Mr. "is responsible for the "management of bookkeeping".

The same structure is true of the "Gongzhong".

Above the male and calf, there is a "channel master", which is equivalent to the vice president who is in charge of the company.

In addition to the two-tier management structure of the public middle school and the calf, there are also some so-called 'canal runners', who are responsible for inspecting the waterways and collecting water charges, and they are guided by the canal owner and are thugs.

There is a slight difference in the basic structure between the "calf" and the "gongzhong", which is reflected in the fact that it has more functions for the development of channels and water conservancy management.

There will be a number of smaller "calves" under each "public middle school", and such an organizational model constitutes a "development group".

Zhen Jin has such an economic management organization, and he is much higher than the Ulan family in terms of efficiency, so he gradually occupies an advantage in military confrontation.

Of course, this advantage is still due to the fact that Zhen Jin took a defensive position and did not go out of his own jurisdiction, instead of going to the grassland to conduct a large-scale cavalry competition.

As for the Ulan family, although the cavalry is very strong, it is obviously not enough to use them to attack the city, and the cavalry of the Ulan family can only use force against Zhen Jin, so they can only use the cavalry to fight against the infantry guarding the homeland.

Ulan Yihuang's attention is that Hu Yihuang's troops will strive to uproot Zhen Jin's forces in one fell swoop!(The novel "Amphibious Special Forces" will have more fresh content on the official WeChat platform, and there will also be a 100% lottery gift for everyone!Open WeChat now, click on the "+" sign in the upper right corner "Add Friends", search for the official account "qdread" and follow, hurry up!) (To be continued......)